


The Power of Love

by MissSunFlower94



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Back to the Future, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bog Babies, F/M, Gen, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 06:45:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8276527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissSunFlower94/pseuds/MissSunFlower94
Summary: Aidan Thomas King II, also known as Bog King Jr., also-also known as BK, the eldest son of Bog King and Marianne Fairwood, winds up stuck in 1986 after his friend, Doctor Aura Plum's time machine breaks down. Having accidentally interrupted his parents' time stream, BK has to get Bog and Marianne to meet and fall in love, while figuring out how on earth he'll get himself back to the future.





	

Aidan Thomas King II, also known as Bog King Jr., also-also known as BK, shared all of the aforementioned names with his father. 

He shared a lot of things with his father, truth be told. His height, his nose, the fact that he was all elbows and knees - and shoulders. His eyes were a darker blue, but carried the same shape and deep-set quality. He shared the unfortunate qualities that made him look almost skeletal, and the fortunate ones that made him look intimidating.

Yes, BK shared a lot of things with his father.

Winning fist-fights wasn’t one of them. 

BK licked at his split lip. It had stopped bleeding but it was still red and swollen, as was his left eye. He could feel his mother’s presence in the open doorway, but focused on jamming his phone into his pocket, while looking for his keys. “I’m goin to Doc’s.”

Doc was his name for Aura Plum, his… well, BK wasn’t entirely sure what she was to him. His father called her his aunt, but that wasn’t true, at least not by blood. BK supposed his grandmother, Griselda, and her had been bosom friends for most of Bog’s life and the name stuck. He just called her Doc, but a lot of people did that. 

Marianne Fairwood-King sighed behind him. “You know we’re not mad, right?”

He turned at last. “Well you sure didn’t look happy downstairs.”

Marianne gave a small huff, and crossed her arms, leaning against the doorframe. She didn’t look angry, just a tiny bit exasperated. His mother was frequently exasperated. Mostly with him. Or the babies.

No one ever said BK looked like his mother - it was hard to when his resemblance to Bog King was so strong - but if one broke down his features piece-by-piece it was there. He had his dad’s hair line but the thickness and way it turned auburn in the summer light was all Marianne, he had her ears, her teeth (thank god), and the blue of his eyes was actually more resemblant of his Aunt Dawn.

When she said nothing, he added, “Would you be mad if I had won?”

“ _BK_ ,” she said with a firm sort of gentleness he figured she was born with. Her brown eyes were ever keen under vibrant eyeshadow (someone once asked him if he thought it was weird that his mom still wore ‘a lot of makeup’; it was such a stupid question he hadn’t bothered answering). “That’s not what this is about, you know that.”

“Yeah okay, but it probably would have helped.”

His mother snorted softly, and BK had to look down to hide his smile. “Maybe, but what kind of parents would we be if we were proud of you for getting suspended?”

“It was a very noble cause,” he said, only mildly exaggerating.

“But it wasn’t yours to fight,” his mother pointed out firmly. BK’s scowl returned and he looked away. “Just- I want you to try to keep that in mind for the future, B.”

He met her eyes a moment before looking away again, this time largely out of embarrassment and a bit of guilt. Truth be told, the first guilt he’d felt about his predicament all night. “All right,” he grumbled. 

She smiled again. “Good.” She clapped her hands together as though to clear the air of that subject. “So, are you still going to Plum’s?”

BK bristled slightly. “I wasn’t- I wasn’t, like, running away-”

She laughed. “Never said you were, unless you were planning to scale your window.”

“Who does that?” BK asked, wrinkling his nose. His mother kept laughing. “Yes, I’m still going to see Doc. She texted me a while ago that she needed some help on something.”

“Well,” Marianne considered this, but then shrugged. “Don’t stay out too late - just because you’re suspended doesn’t mean you’re on vacation.”

“I know.” He grabbed his keys.

His mom stopped him before he left, reaching up for him. He ducked down so she could muss his hair. “You’re a good kid, B.”

BK smiled again, almost in spite of himself. “Thanks, mom.”

It was most of the smaller children’s bedtime, so BK had to meander around his twin siblings Prim and Rose as the scampered down the hallway toward the one bathroom upstairs to brush their teeth. He ruffled Prim’s hair as he passed. He could hear Sarra and Chrissy reading in their bedroom. Linden, the baby, was long asleep. 

Downstairs, Acacia was still watching Outlander in the living room and Baby sat beside her, working on homework. Hearing his footsteps, she looked up, and over her shoulder. They shared a look that conveyed mutual rueful ’ _sorry_ ’s followed by mirrored half-smiles and shrugs. He and Baby, the two eldest children, were close enough to converse in facial expressions. 

From the kitchen, BK could hear the radio on and knew his dad was in there. He debated slinking past without saying anything but decided against it last minute. He poked his head into the room. “’m goin to Doc’s,” he said. 

Bog King looked up from where he was closing the dishwasher - having apparently just finished unloading it.“Ye all right, BK?”

“Yeah,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. For all that his parents hadn’t been happy with him earlier, he had been even less so. “Yeah, I’m okay now.”

His father straightened, his back cracking a bit in the process. BK wondered sometimes at how his father had aged. He’d seen pictures of his parents’ wedding and Bog honestly didn’t look much different then as he did now, aside from a few deeper lines around deep set eyes and greying hair at his temples. It wasn’t even that his dad had looked _young_ then either, it was more like Bog King had hit middle aged at age thirty and hadn’t aged a day since. BK wasn’t sure if he had gotten those genes and was even less sure if he wanted them. “Good. Does yer mom know yer goin out?”

“Yeah, she’s okay with it.”

There was a brief pause and then. “And what if I said I wasn’t?”

BK considered this. “I’d scale my window.”

Bog laughed. “No respect,” he muttered. “Least yer honest about it.”

He was grinning again. His parents were weird but they knew how to defuse tension. “I try to be anyways.” His father shook his head, still laughing. He shook his head. “Look, you’ll probably be asleep when I get back so I’ll just tell you to call grandma now because Doc always tells me to say that to you. ’ _Tell your dad to call his mother one of these days_!’” he mimicked. 

Bog rolled his eyes. “All right, all right,” he said, waving his son off. “And BK - try not to stay out to late. It’s a suspension-”

“Not a vacation,” BK rolled his eyes. His parents were practically the same person sometimes. “Mom beat you to it.”

Bog chuckled, looking past BK to wear his mom had entered. “Dammit, Mari, this is why I like goin in first - ye steal all my good lines.”

“Babe, you’ve never had a good line in your life.”

His father’s scowl almost looked menacing, with his heavy salt and pepper eyebrows drawn over piercing blue eyes. Then Marianne came around to get a glass for water, pinching Bog’s ass in the process. BK’s grown-ass father blushed and swatted her away when she laughed. 

“Right,” BK drawled, taking a step toward the door. “I know my cue to go before you two start being gross.” He paused. “Hey Baby!”

Baby’s voice called a moment later. “Yeah?”

“Keep an eye on mom and dad, will you?" He didn’t need any more siblings, and god only knew leaving these two alone - or mostly alone - for too long seemed to result in them.

"No!" 

BK sighed. "No respect,” he muttered. He grinned a lopsided smile at his parents. “See you tomorrow.”

Outside, he took a moment to take in the two story house. It looked bigger on the outside than it did when he was inside with his large family, and honestly it wasn’t that large of a house. It had three bedrooms, plus one repurposed storage space in the basement where Baby and Acacia slept. BK was the only one with a room for himself, and once he moved out, Baby and Acacia would take that one. 

He paused a moment by the open kitchen window, where his parents still were.

“See? Told you he doesn’t hate you.”

“I didn’t think he did. Ah just- d'ye think we should have been so hard on him?” There was a pause followed by Bog’s breathless laugh. “Don’t look at me like that, Tough Girl; it’s an honest question. He was doin what he thought was right.”

“I know that,” Marianne said. “But he’s gotta learn how to stand up for himself and others without always escalating things.”

Another pause. “Love, ye realize how that sounds comin from the two of us us.”

His mother laughed. “Oh, shut up.”

“It’s true, though. Ye and I were every bit the firecracker he is when we met, and I at least didn’t have the defense of bein’ a 'rebellious teenager’. Ye on the other hand-”

“For god’s sake, do not start the robbing the cradle talk,” she said with mock outrage.

“I'll stop when _yer da_ does.”

“Now you’re just being mean.” But she was laughing, and so was he. 

BK shook his head. Regardless of what his parents said, it was hard to believe either of them had ever been anything other than, well, parents. 

BK would had to have been deaf not to hear the kind of respect his father’s name came with in certain circles of their small town. Far more respect than BK suspected most bartenders got. He was willing to believe his dad had been something to be reckoned with in his day, but even that was hard to imagine. Bog was loud and looked rough around the edges, and yes, had a great many years on Marianne Fairwood, but he was hardly a brute. He still blushed when Marianne so much as kissed his cheek.

In fact, of the two of them, BK was more willing to believe his mother had been the firecracker his dad called her. While the majority of his memories of his mother growing up involved her either pregnant or with a baby in her arms (sometimes both - eight kids, man), Lord have mercy on people who told her what she could and couldn’t do because she wouldn’t. Since his teenage growth spurt had taken affect she only came to his shoulder but sometimes BK organized his life around the singular goal of not pissing off his mother. 

And even if they had both been in his near-delinquent shoes years ago, they’d had each other to balance themselves out. 

BK sighed, leaving the window behind and setting off toward Plum’s.

* * *

“I’m sure they aren’t mad,” Plum said, her eyes appearing overlarge through thick goggles. She propped them on her head a moment to look at him.

BK growled his frustration. “Look, Doc, can we focus on the 'life-changing’ invention you called me over for, and not my family life?”

They were in Plum’s workroom, the studio above her garage. It was full of things BK didn’t quite understand and knew not to touch. Instead he fiddled with a wind-chime in the one window and watched the incense burn in the corner of the room. 

She was strange and eccentric and no one in the town knew what to do with her. She was the ’ _crazy suburban mom_ ’ who you heard about with crazy home remedies on clickbait articles - without the mom part - and BK was sure someday she’d actually become famous for it. But that didn’t seem to be why she did it.  

The summer BK was fifteen he had taken a job running errands for her, watching her cat Imp when she was out of town, and in general just helping around the shop. After the summer ended, Plum had decided, with good help being so hard to find, to keep him around at least on weekends. BK hadn’t protested.

This was another place where he and his father differed: Bog and Plum clashed more often than they didn’t, but for whatever reason, BK liked her. If his parents thought it was strange they at least never said so, which was more than the kids in his grade did. The first time someone made a reference to _The Graduate_  in regards to their friendship, BK had climbed over several cafeteria tables in order to tackle them to the ground. 

Presently Plum raised her eyebrows, but then plopped her goggles back down and returned to toggling with something. “Oh, all right.”

BK would usually help, but a moment later he was pacing again. “I mean, I know they’re not _mad_ -mad.” Plum snorted softly but kept working. “They aren’t even that upset about the fight part.” He paused. “Which makes sense. They fucking met at a bar fight, I think. Some kind of fight, anyways.” His mother never looked so happy as she did when reminiscing about the two of them having been in some bloody brawl. His parents were fucking weird.

“You are their son,” Plum observed dryly, without looking up. “So why are they not-really-mad, then?”

BK sighed in frustration and sat heavily on one of the stools in Plum’s workshop. “It’s that- it was Baby’s fight.”

Baby’s real name was Laurel and, at sixteen years old, wasn’t a baby - but the nickname had stuck long ago. So BK got in the habit of explaining to strangers that she was Baby, like that one girl in Dirty Dancing (BK knew nothing about Dirty Dancing, except that it was a movie a lot of people his parents’ age liked, and had a main character with the same name as his sister).

Plum looked up now. “Baby’s the last person I’d imagine fighting someone.”

BK growled under his breath. “That’s just it. This- this _douchebag_ was harassing her in the hall after school and she was just- just standing there. I know she was handling it her way but- she’s my _sister_ \- I couldn’t let him-" 

He ran his hands through his hair. "But then Baby was upset that I caused a scene when she could handle herself, and mom and dad had to sit us both down and- _ugh_. It’s not that I don’t think she can take care of herself but god, if mom or dad heard the things this dick was saying to her they would have punched his lights out too!”

He exhaled a bit shakily. Talking with his parents that evening had cooled him down for a little while, but talking about it had pissed him off again. His parents were right, Baby was right; it hadn’t been his fight, but damn it, he wasn’t going to sit around. 

Plum was silent a moment before shrugging. “Judging by your face, I don’t suppose you succeeded at the 'punching his lights out’ move.”

BK threw his hands up. “Invention. Talk. Now.”

She laughed. “Yes, sir. Now give me oooone second… there!” She pulled her goggles off again and removed the gloves BK hadn’t noticed she was wearing. “You brought your camera, right?”

“Brought my phone.”

“Your- oh, I suppose that’s close enough,” Plum said. “Crazy what phone cameras can capture these days. Come on, come on!” She got to her feet, and headed for the stairs. 

“Wait, hold on, Doc. Can’t you just show it to me up here?" 

Plum tittered. "Oh, this isn’t the invention, BK my boy. This is just the final component! The big deal, that’s in the garage!”

BK followed her, dumbfounded. “Did you build a car?”

“Something like that.”


End file.
